1) Community Help Desk - I’ve already used Twitter several times to investigate an issue I’ve been having with my computer, or a problem one of my clients has come across. Just yesterday I was able to pinpoint the source of a domain redirect issue because my followers in other countries could reach the site even though I was being redirected.

2) Write a Collaborative Book - you and a bunch of your favorite Tweeps could write a novel, one sentence (tweet) at a time. The results could range from hilarious to Shakespearean. I thought of this while reading about the popularity of Japanese novels composed via mobile text messages, but it turns out that some attempts have been made at this already e.g. 140 Novel and Good Captain. You could do a similar thing with song lyrics.

3) Live Webinars/Tutorials - you could create a new Twitter account with protected updates and ask invitation-only participants to follow you. Then you could hold a *closed* webinar at a pre-arranged time using Twitter for delivery instead of expensive webinar solutions. Twitter allows you to live chat, post links, photos, videos, audio files and text so there is no need for any plug-ins. You could even use a Twitter buffer like Twuffer to space out the content of the webinar via tweets over a specific timeframe.

4) Free Market Research - Who needs to pay expensive market research companies to learn stuff about your latest product? Just send a link, a free sample or a short survey to your followers and watch the feedback flow in.

5) Online Reputation Management - Twitter is ideal for tracking what people are saying about you, your company or your product. You can use Twitter Search to enter keywords or hash tags. Or you can use purpose-built widgets such as TweetBeep which work just like Google Alerts and send you regular emails containing any discussions involving your chosen Twitter accounts or hash tags. These work well for competitor tracking too.

6) Laugh a Day / Therapy - I’m consistently amazed how many long-term Twitter users fail to use the favorites option to bookmark tweets that they like. Whenever I read a tweet that makes me laugh out loud, I favorite it immediately. Then, whenever I am feeling a bit flat, stressed or sense a bad mood coming on, I turn to my favorites líst knowing I will be giggling in no time. You can also rely on your followers to sense when you’re down and cheer you up.

7) Competitions - Companies like Zappos and Hand Bag Heaven have been holding competitions on Twitter for a while now. You basically elicit a response from your followers in exchange for the chance to win something. You could ask a question about one of your products or ask followers to find something on your site to win a gíft certificate. But with a bit of ingenuity, you can be even more inventive.

DVDQuotes posts questions starting with WMITF, (which stands for Which Movie Is This From?) and gives away random DVDs to the Twitter user with the first correct tweet. Actor and Comedian Stephen Fry declared December 1 to be Oscar Wilde Day and asked his 30,000 plus followers to post Wildesque tweets using the hash tag #oscarwildeday for a chance to win downloads of his audio book. The competition took on a viral quality and earned the comedian at least 2,000 new followers within 48 hours.

Virtual Alarm Clock - Did you know you can use Twitter to set appointment reminders for yourself or others? You can use tools such as the Retweet Timer and Twittercal to tweet events from your Google Calendar as @replies to your Twitter profile at pre-set dates and times.

9) Idea Sharing / Community Mind Mapping - So this great business idea comes to you in the shower and you are busting to make it happen. But you want to be sure that your stroke of brilliance is fabulous and not folly. This is where your Twitter followers come in. Whether you tweet publicly or DM only your most trusted followers to keep it under wraps, you’ll get unbiased and practically instantaneous feedback on your big plans. Would you use it? Could it work? How much would you pay for it? What features should it have? Tapping into the combined brain power of your Twitter community is a great way to flesh out a business plan.

10) Competitor Tracking - You can use Twitter to monitor the activities of your enemi… er competitors without alerting them. Simply create an anonymous Twitter account and start following them. If they bad-mouth your company, or tweet about a product that may threaten your market share, you’ll know immediately.

11) Bug Testing - Along the same lines as 4), you can use your Twitter followers as live BETA testers when you roll out a new product or software version. Your followers will often report bugs faster than paid customers because they *know* you and want you to succeed.

12) Become Your Favorite Character - Ever idolize a particular movie star or TV character? Why not create an account for them and tweet in character? A few tweeps have done this already, with hilarious results e.g. Laura Ingalls from Little House on the Prairie and wheelchair-bound Andy from Little Britain. Just make sure you don’t step on the toes of the official sites representing the character in question.

13) Sport / Treasure Hunt Aid - With it’s 140 character limit, Twitter is the perfect medium to deliver clues for online and offline scavenger hunts and popular sports such as geocaching .

14) Live Presentation Aid - Presenting at a conference or other event with Internet access from your laptop? You can tweet on the big screen to a) make a point b) elicit a response from Tweeps in the audience c) conduct live research d) gain instant feedback on a topic or question. I’ve used Twitter this way in the past and not only is it entertaining for the audience, but it’s also a great way to overcome stage fright.

15) Build a Twitter Application - Despite not being monetized yet, Twitter’s phenomenal growth has spurred the development of hundreds of applications that make money from Twitter either via advertising or donations. Why not build an application around Twitter and make your fortune?

About The Author
Article by Kalena Jordan, one of the first search engine optimization experts in Australia, who is well known and respected in the industry, particularly in the U.S. As well as running a daily Search Engine Advice Column, Kalena manages Search Engine College - an online training institution offering instructor-led short courses and downloadable self-study courses in Search Engine Optimization and other Search Engine Marketing subjects.

Today, 12/31 at 6:30pm we will be upgrading to Wordpress v2.7 - if the blog is down for a little while, well …

If you Tweet and have a Blackberry, here’s a great review on a software product just for you. Make sure to check out the video.

http://tiny.cc/reFjf

So today one of us got started with a Twitter account. Now if you haven’t Twittered or gotten an account, well there’s a whole new world waiting for you. It even has its own language. I know, just what we need, more acronyms to learn, right?!

So, now what about the value of Twitter to SEO?

Over the next few months we are going ot experiment with our Twitter account and let you know what we find out.  For now you can visit www.Twitter.com and sign up for a free account - and become Twitterpated!

Here is a great 10 minute video interview done by WebProNews at PubCon 2008 in Las Vegas where Matt Cutts talks about upcoming changes at Google - what we call, “The Future of Search.”

Click on this Link and then scroll down to see the video.

Google Page Rank

So, what about Google Page Rank?  Is that PageRank, PR, internal or Google Tool Bar of which we speak?

Well, it’s all, both, yes that one.

There’s such a mentality that PR (Google Tool Bar) is the be all, end all important piece of the ranking puzzle. To and end, that’s true, and yet it is absolutely irrelevant if you miss the first piece.

The first piece is relevance. Your page (you choose) has to be seen as relevant for the term being searched. If it is not, then PR is useless. That being said, PR is derived from the pagerank portion of the algorithm. There’s a neat little formula that you can find if you Google the patents for Google’s various ideas.  And this helps determine the PR value (0-10) in the tool bar.

The other difference is that PR is updates (at the time of this writing) but once every 3 months. Don’t expect big changes because you have gotten a boatload of inbound links in the last 60 days. That is unless it just happens to fall on the day/date of the update.

But why do we look at the PR value for our pages as the Holy Grail of SEO importance, when in reality it is where you show up in the SERP that is the true value. All these other things are just the underlying causation.

How do you improve your PR?

Well, at the 50,000 foot level, the explanation is - increase the number of one-way inbound links to your site form other sites. To get more link juice, get those links from sites that are themselves considered authoritative and have a PR higher than yours. Yes, it is possible to get higher PR from having link volume as well, but be careful. You never know what sites might be considered as having little or no value for the purpose of increasing your popularity. And typically only sites that have been banned by Google will cause you harm if they link to yours. For the most part though, you just won’t get credit. Google sees the likely possibility that you should not be held accountable for site that you have no control over that wish to link to your site (smart thinking).

We can help you with your Page Ranking by providing you with a link building campaign that is both affordable and effective.  Look at the cost on our pricing page.

more…

We’ve debated he value of a blog for a long time. To put it to the test we’ve decided to make a blog an integral part of our new website design and function.

Our blog, SEO for My Website, is going to be about SEO for Your website. It is going to pretty loose and might look like thoughts that pop into our heads or maybe just stand alone comments about the world of SEO.

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is one of the functions that comprise the larger SEM or Search Engine Marketing. SEM also contains paid search. The difference between the two, at the 50,000 ft level is that SEO deals with organic, natural or free search, while Paid Search is exactly as its name implies - you pay to someone visit your site.

We’re strictly an SEO Company, as the name of the company implies; Nothing But SEO. We don’t use methods that are questionable, black hat or even gray hat. We use strictly tried and proven methods, which empower your website to rank as high as possible in organic search engine results pages (SERPs) for selected keyword phrases.

Now that doesn’t mean we are anti paid search, quite the opposite. There is a definite place for properly developed and managed paid search. In fact, if you want paid search we will refer you to one of our close associates specializing in paid search.

We happen to like SEO and nothing but SEO. Our philosophy is that we have found something we are very good at and it is our niche. We will own it by being the foremost experts in its application to bringing more traffic to your website. By developing our own R&D efforts with new and innovative processes which can impact organic searchengine results, we will be able to provide you with unparallelled new and unique methods to apply to your SEO Strategy.

Thank you for your time and interest in our website, blog and in our SEO Company.

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